From The Pacific Monthly Portland, OR: The Pacific Monthly Company, Vol. XXI, No. 5, May, 1909, page 506:


THE REQUIEM OF THE BIG HEART
By Charles Badger Clark, Jr.

Up the sun-beat hill we will carry him;
'Neath a grim, spiked yucca we'll bury him
And his grave will be hard to find;
But his pet hawse whickers the whole day long,
And the boys speak soft and the work goes wrong,
And the night don't bring neither laugh nor song,
For his heart it was big and kind.

There's never a woman to cry for him;
Just the dry range wind it will sigh for him,
And us few that he's left behind.
There's never a parson to talk and pray,
Nor a hint of a grief in the glarin' day,
But we frown while we shovel the sand away,
For his heart it was big and kind.

All his tale will go to the sand with him—
'Cept the part that showed like a brand with him—
For his mouth never bragged nor whined;
But we read on the face that is still and pale,
How his game was to lose and his luck to fail,
And his life was a night on a rain-swep' trail,
Yet his heart it was big and kind.

There is some that would see only wrong in him,
'Cause that thirst of hell was so strong in him,
And his good they would never mind;
But we all take falls from the trail we plan
And, though mebbe he slipped in the race he ran,
When he fell like a beast he'd get up like a man,
And his heart it was big and kind.

It's the last of the good, bright sun for him,
And the last, dim chance it is done for him,
And the rest of his trail is blind;
So the poor, blurred life, that we kaint see through,
With its weak and strong and its false and true,
Our God of the Open, we'll leave to You,
For Your heart it is big and kind.